I was just browsing through a user's reputation history (45243) and noticed that there is a massive drop in reputation there, all for one question (-452 rep). How does this happen - did he really get down voted that much?

2 Answers
2

Considering the fact that that question has 7 up votes which exactly correspond to the amount of positives rep he got and considering the answer had a bounty associated with it (see the highlight round the accepted icon) [Due to recent changes in how bounties work you can see that a 500 rep bounty was paid out] I would say he paid out a bounty.

Are we sure it was a bounty, the question was asked Mar 4, and the selected answer was also written that same day (minutes later) it seems strange to me that the user would wait for 48 hours and then place a bounty (almost all of his rep) on a question where he already had the correct answer?

My dear Watson Nathan, you're making the classic mistake of assuming other people share your motivations.

I see you've learned from me after all, no nothing so sinister, have a look at the question, it's regarding boolean operations, how to negate a boolean value. What kind of programmer would you expect to ask such a question?

Okay, thanks, I didn't realise that the red outline around the tick meant that the question had had a bounty on it!
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a_m0dJul 9 '09 at 7:36

Are we sure it was a bounty, the question was asked Mar 4, and the selected answer was also written that same day (minutes later) it seems strange to me that the user would wait for 48 hours and then place a bounty (almost all of his rep) on a question where he already had the correct answer.
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Nathan KoopJul 9 '09 at 14:08